Installing Plasma Media Center
Plasma Media Center celebrated its v1.0 release in March, and while it’s still early for it to compete with more established apps, it’s also so new that it hasn’t been packaged for Linux just yet. So in order to try it out, you’ll need to build it from source. First, you’ll need to download the source code. Next, you’ll also need to install some additional software. The quickest method to get these is via the following terminal command: Now you’re ready to build it. First, unpack the source code to your Home folder. Next, open the terminal and use the following commands: You may see some warnings among the colorful output from the build process, but it’s nothing to worry about. After the “make install” command finishes, you’ll find the Plasma Media Center under the “Multimedia” menu.
Usage
Despite the “1.0” version number, Plasma Media Center is still a work in progress. The look-and-feel is pleasant, and distinctively KDE. But it provides only basic functionality to consume your media. The main menu items include Music, Video, and Pictures, and clicking over one of these presents the choice to view all available files of that type, or to browse for them on the local machine or another machine on the network.
This appears limited to your local machine at the moment, as every attempt I made to view the “Network” option produced an error about a malformed “remote:/Network” URL. On further investigation, I found that if I created a network place (such as an SFTP account), I was able to browse there normally.
Furthermore, viewing the three types of media – videos, music, and pictures – all worked as expected. Clicking on one of the media types started the appropriate player. But there were only a minimal set of options… just enough to start/stop/move within the video. The controls were slightly confusing as well: you’d expect the “Stop” button to end playback as well as close you out of a particular media file, but in this current version you remain in an “open” state I’d associate more with “Pause.” Also, in order to add a file to the playlist, you currently need to click-and-hold (an interaction clearly targeting touchscreen devices). (Angry Kid is a copyright of Aardman Animations)
Assessment
On the other hand, there’s potential in being able to create multi-media playlists (e.g. containing videos and music). Plasma Media Center has a long way to go to become a close competitor to the XBMC’s and MythTV’s of the free software world, but as an unrepentant KDE fanboy, I can’t wait to see what they come up with.
